Julian Lewis: I disagree with quite a lot of what the hon. Member for Norwich South (Clive Lewis) said. However, I acknowledge the fact he served on the frontline in Afghanistan in the armed forces of the United Kingdom and that it takes a degree of moral courage to speak out against the overwhelming views of an audience. I am sure that he would acknowledge, however, that whatever courage it took for him to make that rather unpopular contribution—I dare say his contribution was possibly, in some respects, inaccurate—it took a lot more moral courage for Maria Ovsyannikova to speak out as she did on Channel 1 Russian TV. I wish to put on record in this House—I do not think it has been done yet since she did so—what her placard said:
“No war. Stop the war. Don’t believe propaganda. They are lying to you here.”
Because she knew the sort of society in which she lives would have her arrested and locked away for what she had done, she had pre-prepared a video which concluded as follows:
“Now the whole world has turned away from us”—
meaning the Russians—
“and the next 10 generations of our descendants will not wash away the shame of this fratricidal war.”
As a young mother with one Russian and one Ukrainian parent, who is better qualified than she to judge?

Julian Lewis: Yes, indeed. Politicians often have harsh words to say about journalists, but I wonder how many politicians would put themselves at risk in the way in which so many journalists—American, BBC, Sky and all the other British journalists—are doing. Let us remember that when we are listening to reports about incoming missiles, those brave men and women are reporting from the very targets on which those missiles are ranged.
Near the end of the second world war, the joint intelligence sub-committee of the British chiefs of staff produced a report entitled “Relations with the Russians”. From years of experience of the Anglo-Soviet alliance against Nazi Germany, the JIC concluded that Russia would respect only strength as the basis for any future relationship.
According to the sneering psychopath Mr Putin, what his country is engaged in at the moment is a holy war against Ukrainian neo-Nazis. What he fails to remind people is that the second world war, with which he presumes to draw comparisons, was enabled only by the vicious agreement between Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia to carve out Poland as a result of a secret protocol of the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact. When people in this country ask which event started the second world war, it is not enough to say that it was the Nazi invasion of Poland. It was the Nazi-Soviet agreement to invade Poland 16 days apart: Nazis from the west and Soviet Russia from the east.
Vladimir Putin is a product of that history and of that system. He earned his spurs in the KGB, schooled in the suppression of captive countries, steeped in the culture of communist domination and filled with regret that the Soviet empire imploded. According to him, its break-up was the greatest disaster of the 20th century—a revealing and curious choice when compared with the millions killed in two world wars, in the Russian civil war and in the forced collectivisations, the mass deportations and the hell of the Soviet gulag. Until the Bolshevik revolution came along, there had been a significant chance of Russia evolving along democratic lines, but then the cancer of Marxism-Leninism gave cynical psychopaths like him their ideological excuse to seize total control. Their opponents were denounced as enemies of the people and were put, or worked, to death with no semblance of due process.
Now that ideology has gone, but the ruthless  mindset remains. Russian leaders no longer claim to be building a workers’ paradise, but they still believe that western capitalists will sell them the rope with which to be hanged.